Why do people on esr have such a limited amount of categories for games? Either UT or Quake, or if it looks fast: painkiller or CPMA. And then when it gets released complain because its not a clone of game XY. It should be obvious that arena fps games need to make a step forward to compete with sc/lol/etc again and this wont be possible by "trying to be Unreal Tournament" or Quake which already got maxed out pretty much.

"Both firing and sprinting/jumping have separate energy bars. The stamina bar run out very quickly, as does the firepower bar (you can get about four or five rapid shots off before it’s empty) so timing is super important."

im looking forward to it, but i am really skeptical if the focus on map making with given components will work for a fps. it seemed natural to trackmania and i hope they will pull it off, but i am doubtful.

The emphasis on easy map making and community involvement makes me think this is what the next DOOM game should be built like (obviously with a cool hellish single player campaign too), since thats what made DOOM2 such a long lasting success. The ability to create Co-Op maps would also draw in a different kind of crowd as well...

There will never be another game like Quake. I have had my eye on this one for a long time now though and the one thing that it has going for it is that the developers actually understand the importance of community involvement / additions / maps as it is what allowed their previous Trackmania series to grow to something like 10 million registered players? I'm sure they will manage to fuck it up in some way though :p

You were comparing a free business model (TM) to a paid business model (TM2). part of the OBVIOUS reason TM was so huge is becuase it was free. Part of the reason TM2 was les successful was becuase it was paid.

If shootmania is free which it appears to be it will be huge too.
End of story.

Trackmania/sunrise and Trackmania 2 are something a bit different than the super-successful traackmania nations/ trackmania forever, which had the massive multiplayer, play for free thing going for it.

oh, nice!
pity that it doesnt have shaft or a machine gun.
i like that it does have deffs and attackers though...
it would be even more interesting if after a first round attackers have to attack another objective on another part of the map...hmmmm...and they set a timer for opponents's attack...and also wolud be nice to have classes like dudes with medpacks...and with ammo....hmmmm and also headshots ...and ww2 look...(but thats not crucial i think)

All games have flaws. Does that mean we should not be allowed to dislike any game because of its flaws? This is ridiculous. There are degrees of severity. There are things that appear as flaws to us and not to others.

He states that the flaws of these games make them un-enjoyable for him. Apparently, this is not a problem with Quake. It doesn't mean Quake is flawless. I means the issues it may have are less severe are unimportant to him.

The videos you see are mostly 3v3. There is almost a 1v1 mode right now.

Gameplay is simple, but in a desperate time like this (League of Legends....) we should consider a game like Shootmania. This has the potential to do better than what Quake is right now.

I'll paste gameplay stuff that Winz talked to me about. I saw he got to the finals so I asked him some questions about the game.

winz• the mod called elite we've played for exemple
winz• is a 3v3 one, there is one team defending and one team attacking by turn
winz• the attacking team has only one player attacking
winz• the attacker of the team is also chosen by turn
winz• it's a 1v3
winz• the attacker is given a rail
winz• while the defenders have RLs
winz• and the goal for the attacker is to either kill the 3 defending guys or stay near the flag to 'capture' it
winz• and score the round
winz• the first team up to 6 rounds wins
winz• duel is very different from duel as we know it in quake/ut etc
winz• yes
winz• and 2 hits for the defenders
winz• duel has no items
winz• you both start at the very same spawn
winz• you don't have any weapon at start
winz• can't shoot him
winz• there are 2 pillars on the map
winz• that give you a rocket launcher with 5 ammos
winz• so you just rush it at start, once you've passed on it you are given that RL and can start scoring points by hitting full face rockets on the enemy
winz• you never kill eachothers, you just have to score the most points by hitting more than him
winz• half of the maps are railless maps
winz• when you have no rocket maps, you can't replenish it by just standing on the pillar you used to get the 5 ammos first

and this.

winz• They said there are gametype with a few items aswell to pick up
winz• such as armors
winz• I haven't played it though
winz• so can't really say how it is like

Search Shootmania on Dailymotion. Tons of videos on there.

They're obviously focusing on more modes, and letting users create maps. The game is spectator friendly too. The support for this game looks really good.

I really want in the Beta so if I find a way to get keys I'll post here.

No, that was actually a good idea in my opinion. That way, newbs will get to play even against much better opponents unlike in Quake where they would just get spawnraped as long as the game goes. It's much better as it's much more newbie friendly and they don't get to only discover all the spawn points multiple times each.

For Quake players, yes it probably is but I think those kind of things are a necessity for the game to be successful.

It's the goal they are trying to achieve in the end, making it newbie friendly enough without dumbing it down too much so it stays a decent title for competitions.

Frankly, I highly doubt Quake players will like it (as proved by this very thread) because of the simplicity of the game but to be fair, you can't please the Quake community, if it's not a Quake3 clone it's not gonna be liked because people don't like changes.
This community is a very small and elitist one, they wouldn't gain anything by trying to please it.

And let's face a Quake with its high skillcap will never ever get big nowadays even with a very good support from the developers.

Either we like it or not, my opinion is that they are right to do what they do.

I don't want to see anymore Q3 clones personally. If id ever makes a new Quake it should be something much different. As different as Q2 and Q3 are for example.

But making something different doesn't mean you need to make it suck. And I'm not so sure I agree that a deathmatch shooter needs to be watered down to that extent (or at all?) for it to be successful.

what about something working kinda like hoonymode ? Be it the oldschool form or some kind of predefined spawn pairings - I have in mind a more complicated version using groups of 3 spawns but I'd struggle if I were to try to explain it here -

I sense that all maps are probably all going to be outdoors maps. Maybe this is so speccing will be an overall better experience.

So, this is definitely a low FoV and low sensitivity game.

Completely the opposite of what I play in Quake and UT.

But I'll gladly adapt to this game.
Just hope to God that they include a dot as an optionable crosshair.
With 12 years of FPS gaming, the one thing I never could adapt to was playing with anything else than a dot.

You overlook the greatest aspect of this game, which is the possibility to customize almost everything apart from the physics and the display. Nadeo is providing the community with the tools, scripts, and basic physics, and people will do the rest. We can therefore expect fun, balanced maps and gametypes, and much more. Talking about scripting, Nadeo's boss once hastily said he could virtually make a tetris game for spectating dead players, giving them something to do. I already imagine gametypes with several arenas where different battles take place etc... the possibilities are endless.

This being said, given the fact that Nadeo has made a huge hit out of a basic game such as Trackmania, that Maniaplanet is a huge community platform, and that Quake, CS, TF2, and even LoL players enjoy the overall physics and sensations of the game, there is no reason not to be optimistic about Shootmania :)

Events are already being organized for the game and it looks more and more like it's gonna be strongly pushed into esport by Nadeo but not only. The event 'Cyberathlete Summit' is an event organized by oxent.

Oxent is an innovative company based in Paris, co-founded by Antoine Frankart and Matthieu Dallon and specialised in electronic sports, services for video game publishers and on-line communities management. Oxent runs the social platform Gamersband.com and edits EsportsFrance.com. Oxent also produced in 2011 the ESWC (Electronic Sports World Cup) during the Paris Games Week. For more information: www.oxent.net.

"...weapon selection is directly tied to the terrain you are standing on...standing on a wooden environment tile results in mortar-based projectiles complete with splash damage, while planting yourself on metal terrain bestows a more powerful lightning gun...It's an elegant alternative to frantic mouse-wheel scrolling in order to change weapons..."

sound pretty crap tbh... As much as I'd love for there to be a new, exciting and popular FPS, I don't think this has enough depth or challenge factor due to the intended noob friendly design.

no wepon switching! far far too noob friendly. expand playerbase by a million or keep an ounce of skill in a game and i would choose skill tbo.
its really odd why sc2 has so much following and quake none. as much skill in both, but one hogs all spectators.
i guess its down to learning curve? sc2 maybe easyer to start?

They have always ruined any competive FPS for me by making the scope for battle limited or gimmicky and this looks outdoorey!

Looks good in its own right though, but cant see it being the next quake which is the only thing that would ever ignite my interest in FPS again, unless the game had a strong visual them like aliens, or was technically off the scale like doom 3 was at the time.

Yeah, he loves Shootmania :)
I wasn't meaning 8 to 5 but what will he do in his fourties for example? Taking sport career is already risky, taking esport career without proper backup is stupid. Well, maybe his family has some business he could take care of but i haven't heard about Stermy's education.

I don't know him in person but I think that he loves gaming, esports and competition. Quakeworld was released in 1996, that's only 16 years ago. Esport still is in a very early stage of development and considering that people get connected more and more all over the world I think it's fair to say that it has a lot of potential to grow.
I would be heavily surprised if within the next 20-30 years esport wont become a money-machine, with serious organisations and "superstars" who earn way above average.
Btw, there are not so few people who got a proper job and a crap life in their forties :)

Well, I guess this game is too poor for pro-purposes.
Ok, it's "fast" (on bigger and largest maps), mostly wide open, and not a lot of objectives, even if you can create your own levels and modes.

2 weapons, how can the game be creative and designed for pros with only 2 weapons (all the more these rockets look more like plasma on quake).

Then, I guess two choices :

- This game is just empty and despite of their waiting, they won't bring a lot of pros on it.
- They expect that people create the game themself, add weapons, fun modes etc. Then the game won't be interesting on the last 2 years per example.

But it seems that pros are going on it, at the same time than DH, a Shootmania tourney is getting place and some pro QL players are going on it instead of DH. :/
Call of $ ?
(I can't found the url, sorry)

Nope, fatal1ty is just trying to play every FPS on the planet and doing everything he can to win, even if it needs to play without any proud and honnor.

The problem is that many players are going on QL, not only Stermy and strenx. Cypher, Cooler and rapha seem to go there (not confirmed yet). Then if these kind of old school players are forsaking their game for this shit (well, they will just play on a tourney, that doesn't mean they will stop QL directly) ...

Wait and see. I just worry about the fact it could steal activity to QL, like LoL did.

I'm not worried at all about this as a threat to Quake. Yes it will attract newbs since that is what it is clearly designed to do, but it has no depth.

A key aspect of what makes FPS games exciting is the architecture of the maps. Shootmania seems to be centred on wide open areas with a few "monuments" to break it up. Yes - the map making functionality will allow players to change that, but it doesn't look like the game will lend itself to intricate rooms like quake, if it does then hopefuly that's the way it will go, but with the lack of weapons and more importantly weapon-choice and the lack of items and advanced movement then it is going to be very very boring after a while.

There dosn't seem to be any way to progress skill wise once you've learned how to aim with the weapons, learn not to spam more than 5 shots at a time and learn some basic map tactics. Once newbs have learned that they will get bored and hopefully migrate to QL ;) It could be a gateway FPS!

Yes there are a lot of pro gamers jumping on the band wagon, but that's because they are pros and they want to make money, no shame in that. I imagine they are getting lucrative payments to play and showcase the game - after all look how much we are talking about the fact that Strenx and others are taking it up.

But none of this will last - look at Brink and that other flying FPS game (can't even remember its name its so crap). All expected to be the final nail in the QL coffin, but turned out to be disappointingly shallow and unchallenging.

Shootmania may turn out to be good for newbs wanting an easy shoot em up, but as an e-sport it doesn't currently (from what I've seen) have anything that will guarentee longevity apart from the map editting features - that could be the real trump card (ID pay attention!).

actually I think you are more or less right. People over empathize the importance of strategy, looking over the fact fps games are mostly about who has the better hand eye coordination; just like most activities in which both skills and tactics are involved at the same time.

You could have the best strats in the world but that means nothing if the opponent hits twice as much and you can't strafe at all. Try playing with your left hand for example, or trying to pull off moves only Messi can do.

In the end that's what separates bad and good players, yet most people (90% or more) don't get it right even if they play for 10 years. That alone means there must be some depth into it.

Skill, but not necessarily 'depth'. Otherwise you could say the same about, say, those reflex-testers where you click a button when the light turns green. There's a big spread of ability there, and some people will never be good at it if they practice for ten years. But surely you wouldn't call it 'deep'.

Wrong, it has replaced QL because Riot gave Turtle Entertainment the money to cover the IEM-Appereance of LoL and to do some other Cups/Leagues for LoL within the ESL.

id Software offered the same to TE (so they say), but they only wanted 3 games in the IEM not 4. Also I doubt that id could give as much money as Riot, cuz LoL is earning them shitloads of money because of all the noobs buying skins/heroes with real cash. QL gives almost nothing to id Soft.

it's also about how much they spend. It's safe to say less than 1% total players bought a subscription.

edit: lets check some stats QL awards.

- "Victory. Win an online match for the first time. 334397 players (12% of total) have earned this award"
That means there's a whooping 2,786,642 total accounts.
This is the extent of what I call the biggest mistake in QL's history, which was having network issues when the game went open beta and when it was finally released. Casual players created accounts but didn't play once. I'd have fired syncerror on the spot.

- "The Last Laugh. Get more frags than deaths in a game. 18924 players (< 1% of total) have earned this award".
This is by far the most earned premium/pro award. Using it as reference, 0.679% of players bought a subscription.
I know people might have re-subbed (second year) so the award isn't earned twice, but obviously not everyone did so less than 1% remains accurate.

There are about 70,000 active QL players, according to qlranks. It reset CA tracking about 3 months ago and now it shows 69,185 CAers.
Considering LoL's growth over the years, it should be really close to 50m total accounts right now.

My point was people in LoL spend absurd amounts of cash (even thousands, as there's always more things to buy) whereas in QL less than 0.1% cares enough to pay a small bit ($24 to $48. You can't spend more than that).
We don't have access to how many people spent money on LoL or how much, but from my experience it's a lot more than 0.1% and $24.

Cheap paying options are not possible since transaction costs are way too high for such amount, particularly in id's case.

And the network issue thing was on id's side (quakelive.com) and not on local game servers. At those 2 times you created an account and had to wait in an infinite queue to enter the website. I remember me and others writing about it before hand in the QL forums as it was obvious it was going to happen, but they fucked up anyway.
It may sound harsh but that's the proper way to describe losing 88% of your potential playerbase because of an employee mistake. I sincerely don't know how he's still working there.